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Ask Slashdot: We've Had Online Voting; Why Not Continuous Voting? (iamnotanumber.org)
periegetes writes: This idea has been bugging me for a while. It takes months to organize a physical election, and several days to count the results, so it makes sense that we don't organize elections every day. However, with the computing resources at our disposal, it would be child's play to setup a site where every citizen could vote for (or against) proposed laws themselves, and could even change their vote at all times, cutting out the middle man and restoring true democracy to the world. That last part may be a stretch, but I, for one, would feel more involved in my government if I didn't have to watch it screw up for years before getting another say in it. I've found precious few articles discussing the matter, which usually means I'm missing an obvious problem. Why, in the age of Big Data and petaflops, don't we consider continuous voting?
You're away on holiday.
An important vote you care about gets put up.
You want to change your vote, but can't because of whatever reason (no Internet, etc.)
Do you end up voting by default the way you voted last time? Or do you have to put in a vote between a certain window?
Oops. You either have a stupid situation, or you're back to the old way of voting.
Not to mention that it requires electronic voting which - in any significant amount - is still not as provable, prevalent or as tamper-proof as it could be.
Here in the US at least, and honestly it should be the same elsewhere, we don't want an actual Democracy due to the downfalls of that system. In effect a true, pure democracy will always devolve into anarchy and eventually a dictator will rise to power and effectively enslave the population. The US system is designed to provide a modified democratic system with protections against the outcome I just described. This is well documented elsewhere, I've provided a pointer in what I believe is the correct direction for finding the answer.
Generally, the electorate isn't informed enough on issues to make good decisions. One of the reasons we have elected representatives in office for 2, 4, 6, etc. years is to provide some stability. People's views change on a whim. Watching one news special about a particular issue can swing views wildly.
This kind of direct voting would result in utter chaos. Nothing's more fickle than public opinion, and it's impossible to get anything done when changing direction at the speed of the news cycle.
How would you be able to identify people voting online though? There's no real way of which I can think of verifying that people voting online really are who they say they are.
I am right here with you, but then what would all the lawyers in the world do with their time? It is a shame that this is not the case. Here in Massachusetts we have voted for the death penalty only to have it shot down by our so called representatives and for the legalization of marijuana only to have them stall until they can setup a way to maximize profit on it. Until we do away with "representation" we will not make progress as a country.
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I'm not sure applying such a concept to anything important is a good thing.
Its a nice fantasy - but even if you could solve the technical issues, do you really think our current political class would give up their power? There are millions of people that make a good living by being government overhead - they would never willingly give up their jobs...
Peter.
What are botnets?
Because "true democracy" isn't people voting like a fucking phone-in talent show, numbnuts. If you're not thinking hard about the detail of each issue, you shouldn't be voting on the detail of each issue, but asking someone to represent you who has an overall direction and will direct their votes accordingly.
Direct democracy works on the smallest scale, but even local government does not put every question up for referendum.
Representatives don't just have more time, but they act as a buffer against the public lynch mob du jour.
Yes, government is corrupt, the world's going to hell in a handbasket, etc. etc. blah de blah. But that doesn't mean it couldn't be a lot fucking worse every time some kid thinks they've found a silver bullet solution to government that's already been thought of by every single moderately bright freshman before them.
A fundamental tenet of democracy is that voting is secret, and that the counting process is transparent. E-voting provides none of these. I'm aware that there are cryptographic protocols that would allow this in theory, but this does not resolve the issue of the voters being coerced by their spouses, families, communities or big brother to vote a certain way. Only casting your vote anonymously inside the voting booth prevents this. Further, having a verifiable paper trail and manual counting makes fraud MUCH more difficult. In E-voting, you only have to alter a single number to sway the election in your favor. In traditional voting, throwing a whole election becomes much harder.
Even if we assume that we go the E-voting path, how can we trust the software running on the system? Who wrote it? Me? Then I know who the next president will be! We can cook up all kinds of hashes etc, but how can you verify that a system that claims to run a particular version of the code is, in fact, running this version? Particularly on a remote connection? Even if all this were, in some fictional universe, in place, this system is highly complex: In code, in technology, in infrastructure. I may be able to grasp this, but my mother (a smart woman, but not tech savvy) won't have a clue. This is fundamentally undemocratic.
See this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
Because as bad as politicians are, they are still better-informed than the general population.
I don't want government looking like a Facebook feed.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
SJWs will ruin it.
it will result in the people with the most money bending public opinion to their will thus corrupting the democracy.
oh wait ...
So you'd like the entire electorate to vote on laws and the like (something completely contrary to the system of representative government the US has (and I'm going to guess you're American), but let's roll with it for a sec...).
What's to prevent people from voting en-masse for lunatic ideas that might be proposed after an event like 9-11, without any check on their power, with little debate?
What's to prevent populist strongmen from grabbing the reins of power - through a legitimate vote, of course - and wrecking the democracy? I think you can find an current example of the risk without breaking a sweat.
It's slow and a little hard for a reason: the founding fathers thought the rubes should have a voice, but not so much of one that they'd be able to suddenly overrun the government on a whim.
Of course, having just escaped English rule, they made a number of provisions for checks on government power, but built the government to respond to long-term trends, not to short-term feverish issues.
First, under the assumption that yes, we could create an online voting system that would permit people to vote on each law one, and accurately tabulate all the votes without any possibility of someone fraudulently altering the results or voting multiple times or buying votes:
Currently most people are stupendously un/misinformed as to issues.
It's the PATRIOT Act. I'm a patriot, I better vote for it.
Or everyone will have the app from their 'party', and for every vote, the app will send a notification as to how to vote.
Second, the voting system would be IMMEDIATELY gamed. Every single corporation with any significant assets would immediately be working on figuring out how to buy votes, hack the results, get people to vote multiple times, anything to get laws passed in their favor.
There is no way to 'tweak' the current system that will be significantly beneficial to the bottom 99%.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
a "true democracy" is a horrible idea. Mob rule would slowly outlaw every activity, lifestyle, and or idea not held by the majority of the country.
"The phrase "tyranny of the majority" (or "tyranny of the masses") is used in discussing systems of democracy and majority rule. It involves a scenario in which decisions made by a majority place its interests above those of an individual or minority group, constituting active oppression comparable to that of a tyrant or despot. In many cases a disliked ethnic, religious or racial group is deliberately penalized by the majority element acting through the democratic process."
I think that kind of says it all.
In a representative democracy, which is what the U.S. has, in theory you elect people based on their judgement, rather than their position on a specific issue, and that avoids this scenario.
Seriously, which politician would want to be obsolete? Or more importantly, which politician would want to give up their paycheck?
The people who run our world from behind the curtains would never give up their power over everyone.
you'd need some kind of honest government or administration to process and present all information on a matter that's up for vote in a transparent, unbiased and easy to understand way, so that everyone could make an informed decision without spending too much time on research. something like the swiss do with their referenda only on a much larger scale. i'm not sure, that this could work in reality without the oversight of neutral robot overlords. at least the problem is a a few numbers of magnitude more complex than just putting together some software for continuous voting. but maybe not more complex than the current political systems & bureaucracy.
The newness is in the fact that we can actually implement it today.
The problem isn't so much technical or logistic but rather "do we actually want that"?
Surveys have shown that the population isn't obsessed with facts. Sharing these facts prior to voting on important issues is problematic. Especially when some information might not be something you can share. E.g. a vote on something related to national security might not include basic privileged information that can be shared with a senator but not with the general populace.
I'm not sure if it will be better or worse than the current state of affairs but I doubt we have the inertia to push towards something like that or that we will derive any benefit from something like that being in place (other than maybe disbanding & shaming congress which might be nice...).
Make laws by Twitch and see which way things lean. It will work "great"!
I think the 2-party system is seriously flawed when the parties can lock out people like Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders. Why not move from representative democracy to direct democracy now that we have the technology in place? Would it be more or less susceptible to corruption than the current system? The electoral college is a curious anachronism, a remnant of times when it took days to collect votes and transport them all to one place, so at least some of the current system is seriously outdated. Is it possible to make it instant but still secure? One form of security would be to allow each voter to verify their vote online after the fact. Any other ideas?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
This is a stupid idea. This was done to death in antiquity. The Greek city-states had direct democracy and while a good idea, it had bugs. These bugs were discussed extensively and people came up with the idea of a republic instead. It is a loss of our Western culture if people have forgotten this process. We are just going to repeat the past if we don't learn from it. This is wisdom that is thousands of years old and yet the question asker has never heard of it. It's like if you had never heard of the luminiferious aether and thought that it solved several thorny problems in your field, unaware that it had already been disproven.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
What you are describing is basically an electronic version of Direct Democracy. Switzerland is probably the best example of Direct Democracy, and it works well for them.
> Why, in the age of Big Data and petaflops, don't we consider continuous voting?
Because it's a completely idiotic idea, that's why.
And I'm getting sick and tired of explaining to you creatures that we live in a REPUBLIC. A republic is a form of government where people elect REPRESENTATIVES who then go vote for laws/legislation and for your information it goes on pretty much all the time (i.e. continuously), what's the matter don't tell me you don't tune in to CSPAN at all hours to watch your representatives in action...??
Can there please just be ONE thing left on this planet that does NOT involve computers? Please??? PLEASE??? ONE thing???
Whoever has the most time to spare and obsessive compulsive interest, wins. And maybe a few celebrities that could make something go viral and make this proposition see 10x the usual voter turnout, 90%+ representing one special interest group. Even the Congressmen are saying there's no time to personally read everything related to every bill, they have aides for that and that's their full time job. If you want a functioning democracy that reasonably accurately represents the will of people, you have to limit the volume and frequency to a level where most of the population will participate. In Switzerland that means once every three months, less than ten proposals (at the federal level anyway) and at that stage in the process a simple yes or no. The process to formulate those proposals are ongoing though. And you also need some form of budget process taking into account the economic consequences of the laws passed, where you are as likely to get as many opinions as you have people. That is why the budget is still formed through representative democracy also in Switzerland, so a simple prohibition/legalization may take effect quicker but anything that requires the government to take fiscal action won't be before the next budge anyway.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This is a horrendous idea for a number of reasons. First of all, we've all used apps that constantly pester us to rate it in the app store. Voting would become the same thing. Lobbyists and candidates would be pushing links down our throats continuously to cast a vote for whatever it is they're pushing.
The second problem is voter intimidation. When voting occurs on a single day, it vastly limits the scope and method in which those wishing to influence an election by threat or force can operate. They can only be in so many places at once, and they cannot intimidate on a wide enough scale to cause much harm. However, if they have the ability, at their leisure, to intimidate voters one on one and force them to vote on the spot, well, the abuse would be horrendous.
Terrible idea.
Better known as 318230.
Somebody has to do the preliminary work, present it to the committees watching over things like constitutionality and then translate the result for the informed consumption of the masses, implying simplification. The bureaucracy would gain even more power than it has today.
First you have the technical problems. If everything is on the internet then anyone that hacks the system could effectively change US law. A very serious issue. Beyond that, I can assure you that people are going to say stuff like "well how will poor people vote"... or something so you'll have to deal with that. Really the technical issues are many... but assuming you were able to address everything... there is the second issue...
Second, direct true democracies kill themselves. We've had a lot of experience with them and what happens is you get a mob mentality. Now we could address this by having Tiers of laws just as we do now. Constitutional laws etc. And I think we could control the excesses of true democracy by saying that certain laws take certain majorities to overturn... so... the US constitution is roughly a 75 percent majority barrier. I could see tiers for 60 or 80 or 90 in addition to that. Or just make it so that if a law was passed with X percentage of the vote it takes that percentage to overturn it. That would contain most fly by night rules from taking effect. In addition, we might require a minimum amount of time any permanent law had to be offered up for before it could be voted upon. So something that is temporary could possibly pass quickly... but if something is going into effective law... perhaps require that it be offered up for everyone to read for 30 days minimum BEFORE a vote happens. And possibly if we go with that tier system we might have different waiting periods for each tier. A high tier law might require three months or six months of open exposure and debate before it could be voted upon.
Stuff like that.
Deal with the technical problems and then deal with the issues with true democracy and the idea seems viable.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Once we set it up then we can fire all the politicians.
"Why, in the age of Big Data and petaflops, don't we consider continuous voting?"
Because so far, nobody has been able to provide secure communications.
The United States really isn't a Republic or Democratic.... Based off of some recent studies I've seen, It's more of an oligarchy. Notice how it's big money pushing laws and not the average citizen.
it would be child's play to setup a site where every citizen could vote for (or against) proposed laws themselves, and could even change their vote at all times
Something should not be done for the sole reason that it is capable of being done.
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What problem is needs to be solved by the implementation of this? What other ways are there to solve that problem? Is one of the solutions better than the others?
To me it looks as if someone just discovered a hammer and now wants to invent nails.
Continuous voting sounds like it might be an interesting use of a blockchain technology, especially the aspects about vote-delegation to a representative with the ability to override that transfer at will for specific votes.
Part of our country's fairly long history of democratic security has been that it takes a whole lot of effort for anything to get done, especially when that anything is passing laws. The fact that it's a fairly lengthy process to create or change a law means citizens and organizations can be comfortable in not being subject to wildly changing regulations. If something is to become illegal, or vice-versa, it's not likely to happen by surprise as long as you're paying attention. Continuous voting would potentially introduce quite a bit of instability, because the Government's actions would be too difficult to predict based on wildly changing public consensus.
This might be an interesting way to adapt the U.S. House of Representatives for a larger population and changing communications technologies. Constitutionally require all new laws to be passed with sunset clauses and re-voted every 4 years. Use more of a direct democracy in the House, where voting is out of the total population, but a Representative casts the votes of everyone who has delegated their votes to that individual. Let the Representatives be advocates and speech-makers and politicians, but let people themselves step in and cast their votes if they want, on a predictable schedule.
Where do you live where things are so backward?
Counting ballots takes a couple hours, tops.
A pure democracy is indistinguishable from mob rule.
Congressmen swear to uphold the Constitution. Not that they take the oath all that seriously, but at least they generally have a better understanding of constitutional limits on government power than the average citizen. If anything, our current state of education in this country actually contributes to ignorance of the Constitution.
And if the online voting also incorporated the one-man-one vote rule so popular nowadays, the people living in the so-called 'flyover' states would, in effect, be disenfranchised. We could see demands for secession from the union from all but the northeast and the west coasts. This is also an argument against eliminating the Electoral College, but I'll not get into that here.
The "powers that be" consider the plebs to uneducated and to dumb to be trusted to vote on stuff that matters, hence you (and we) can only vote for a President or a Party ...
And with a proper set up remote voting, is it really anonymous? If it is not, you certainly can make it tamper proof, however considering that from an outside point of view the Bush elections where rigged ... do your "powers that be" really want that? Or didI watch to many conspiracy videos on youtube?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
40% of Trump voters are in favor of bombing the Kingdom of Agrabah. A third of Republicans overall. A fifth of Democrats. Agrabah is the fictional setting of Disney's Aladdin.
While the governments we have now are based on horses and pidgeons, in terms of technology, and are totally obsolete, putting people directly into power never works. Putting representatives into power never works either. Power kills.
Work to replace these ancient barbaric systems, not augment them.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The discussion is often far more important and can be more far-ranging than the outcome, so a system of continuous outcomes will undermine the discussion.
basically it would upset the muggles. look at the responses here: all of them are based on vacuous analogies to ancient systems, dredge up irrelevant issues like voter intimidation, or praise politicians (who would certainly still exist, as would parties) or that less indirect democracy would somehow eliminate the constitution. or worse: suggest that voting security would be a problem.
the main issue is that muggles are used to the dysfunctional system we have now, and the vested interests are comfortable with how they can keep things under control. or to put it another way: the voters who are unhappy with the current system are getting some catharsis through Bernie and Trump, and the latter group will probably spend their load well before the election.
Let's see.
I can easily envision a world where opinions are cast and the "decision of the people" is whatever the politician in power wants it to be anyway. There would be no recourse and no verification. People would be little more than sheep. ...almost like now.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
I had this idea when I was in High school. Then I grew up and realized that communism ruled the earth. The rich pay the government to provide a communist existence for the poor. The poor are given assurances from the government they vote for that the rich will be penalized with massive regulation preventing them from getting richer through capital formation. The rich pay lawyers to evade the regulations, which the poor cannot afford, so only the poor are prevented from raising capital, which prevents them from getting rich. The rich don't need government: they can hire that, so the government needs to keep the poor poor so they are needed by the poor. All the costs associated with this are passed along to the poor. The U.S. government gives the poor enough money to pay for the union's wages and prints the money, which is valued for its ability to buy oil. All other countries devalue their currencies to make up for this.
Because voting on everything takes a lot of time.
Want to watch a football game? No, sorry, have to enter my vote for whether to change the wording on the outdated form otherwise the folks on the other side of the issue will (or will continue to) commit fraud. And after that, I need to vote on whether to create an exception on the sin tax for poor farmers who only sin once or twice. We also have to vote on whether to increase the quorum for a vote to 2.5% because of that bad law that got passed this morning with only 2.1% of the registered voters actually voting on it. Then, there is the coming issue of whether we should ban something I forget. What was the question again?
... we have an electoral college.
Democracy is a rule of majority... a Republic is a rule of law
A democracy is a tyranny of majority.
Our system of government is often described as a "representational democracy" currently, but this is not even true. An ideal representational democracy would represent all citizens, but ours represents owners. And this is by design, because in the nascent stages of our development, the "owners" meant landowners, and they were viewed as the responsible set of men who would rule justly, a philosophy supported by the likes of John Jay ("Those who own the country ought to govern it") and Madison ("The purpose of government is to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority"). Of course, it's not only landowners who can vote now, but the opinions of the irrelevant masses are carefully cultivated and weaned to an irrelevant decision between two largely homogenized candidates by today's "owners" (those who control vast capital).
So before jumping on the pure democracy train, I'd say let's work on getting a representational democracy that actually represents people, not capital.
We have technology to allow us to vote on a list of programs/tasks that group of experts (not politicians) would handle in next 4 years. We would also define constrains like budget, debt, desired long term outcome, when to stop program, etc.
The problem here is that with continuous voting you get continuous decisions which can fail badly when the decision is discrete.
For example, if a irreversible change requires 75% of the vote, then someone might be able to lock that in with a manufactured crisis and a highly popular impassioned plea. Even if enough people change their mind the next morning, it's still a done deal.
Or voting on the distribution of funds in a public pension may fluctuate around an important voting threshold. So when the vote is above the threshold, the fund managers have to invest one, and when it is below the threshold they have to invest a different way. It may even be worth the fund managers' while to encourage this state, say if they get fees for any sales of fund assets they generate.
So continuous decisions work best when the choice is similarly continuous. I don't see a lot of opportunity for that at the government level.
That would imply our system is actually democratic and not just democratic by name. You are correct in saying that we have the technical ability, but the political will is not there, in my opinion, because bureaucrats actually want the system as convoluted as possible to hide the fact that our democracy has been subverted by special interests.
This is something which has been discussed on many occasions since the 1990s.
The problem isn't that technology couldn't accelerate the processes, that's a given.
Slight of hand is not something you can count on an 'army' of people to do effectively, therefore the physical count being done in front of people at opposing ends of political spectra is much more difficult to pull fraud under than closed electronic boxes where we can't even guarantee that some open source election platform is even what's actually running on the machine.
We must somehow address fraud counter-measures with electronic voting systems without incurring billions in costs.
1-you have to spend time keeping up to date on the issues. 2-either you go to the polling station (inconvenient) or electronic voting (endemic vote buying and intimidation issues). 3-the news media become the new politicians, swaying public support for their "clients".
Imagine a system where everyone could vote on a case by case basis. You could give your vote to someone else that could vote on your behalf, but that voter would need to lock his vote down some time ahead, in case s/he does not vote as you intended; you could then have the opportunity to change your vote. Everyone could be 'politicians'. Cases could be upvoted from local to national to global.
The problem with this is there must then be provisions to cater for minorities...
If a plebiscite were held on immigration, the public at large in most countries would vote to block unlimited immigration. The powers-that-be don't want to this to happen: business-owners want cheap labor while certain politicians hope to game the system so they never lose.
"Protip: it's generally a good idea to read all of something before commenting on or replying to it, even if your finger gets tired."
The vote would be based upon the latest headline flashed at the most people. However the latest twitter celeb of the hour felt, would become the law.
And, of course, being able to "change your vote" means that, somewhere, the way that you voted is recorded... so that you can be tracked down if you voted "the wrong way".
The current system, which limits the number of entitlement programs voters can vote for themselves, has created an $18.8 trillion national debt and what's far scarier, over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities: http://usdebtclock.org/
If those limitations were removed, I'd expect such an orgy of debt that the U.S. would have no choice but to default or careen into hyperinflation.
As they say, "A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
It would need to be a blockchain, and people aren't smart enough to understand that.
A central site would just be hacked, technically or socially.
at least in the United States. We have a Republic as a means of preventing the lower classes from voting themselves land. There's lots and lots of writing about this dating back to when our constitution was drafted.
Our Gov't mostly exists to keep the 1% in power. They realized they needed a strong central gov't to raise an army and protect their interests, and they needed a strong civilian gov't to go with the Military one so that they wouldn't just get disposed in a coup d'etat. It's really just that simple. This is why mandatory voting never gets any traction.
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Firstly, online voting isn't trustworthy. If it didn't use blockchain technology, it's extremely prone to hacking. No blockchain-based system has been built yet. It would have to be open source and verified by experts. Even then, vulnerabilities are discovered in code all the time.
What you're talking about is either direct democracy or liquid democracy. The former exists and works extremely well in Switzerland. Contrary to myth, the Swiss system is a mix of representative and direct. Govts make ~95% of laws. The electorate can overrule them within a couple of months. The other ~5% are made by the judiciary (I believe) by interpreting citizen-initiated referendums.
Basically, the Swiss are in control of their govt rather than the other way around. They have a mature electorate -- obviously the US and frankly most countries would pass some horrific laws under direct democracy. It would need to be introduced gradually.
Liquid democracy is where you can vote for any issue you want. If you choose not to, your delegate ie representative will vote on your behalf. It's never been tried and may leave govts with too much power.
New Hampshire has all proposed legislation visible on the internet. A couple of years ago, I spent 6 hours reading as many biils as I could as fast as I could in preparation for meeting with the local representative. I was able to read about 1/4 of the bills currently up for consideration, and I wasn't able to consider any of them carefully. This is going to be worse for a bigger state, and far worse for the federal government. It is the job of legislators to know what's happening, and when they are denied the ability to read the bill before voting on it (Obamacare, among others) they should vote against it.
Read what you can, mail or email your representative. If a bill is particularly important, either beneficial or egregious, join or form an organization or campaign to deluge multiple legislators with your views. Few if any people have the ability to follow all legislative activity (not to mention the even more voluminous [and unconstitutional] regulatory activity.) Voting on it all is foolish, although if every action and expenditure required a majority of eligible voters, there might be some advantage.
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>> It takes months to organize a physical election, and several days to count the results
Nonsense. In Canada, the government can call an election at any time they want; it is typically six weeks between calling the election and voting day. After the polls close, results are generally available within a few hours, and broadcast on the 11 PM news. That's with old-fashioned (and secure) pencil and paper balloting.
That's the question that needs to be asked when deciding between direct democracy vs republicanism, or when deciding how long a term of office for an elected official should be.
Think of it in private sector terms. What's better for the long-term health of the company|the shareholders|the employees|the customers? Having the bean-counters on your back once a year? Once per quarter? Once a week? Every day?
What's the best split of your time? Working or making powerpoints about working to feed your boss(es)?
Maybe we should have federal recall elections (with a suitably high threshold to initiate it, to avoid gumming up the works). Maybe we should move to proportional representation, or staggered terms, or something else. But I can see no good coming from injecting the BS of a perpetual election cycle into American politics.
All mechanisms can be gamed, and no system can be perfect. The real answer is to elect good people to office. That's always the hard part. Run for office yourself if you feel no one else can do a better job and it bothers you enough. But let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater just yet.
Every citizen should have a vote on every topic, which they would give to their representative to use on their behalf. For most mundane issues, the representative would cast the votes given to him, but at any time any citizen could take their vote from their representative and cast it any way they see fit.
Yes, direct democracy could be saved from the tyranny of the active minority if for each citizen who didn't vote on an issue, their elected representative was given such a proxy vote. But I'd make representatives' proxy votes only fractional, so that the system wasn't a dead duck unless 50-75% of citizens cast a ballot.
But the net effect is the voting population acts like children. They vote for services but vote down paying for them.
Politicians shouldn't always do what the popular vote tells them to do. (The fact the voters tend to vote in morons is a complete separate topic).
Seriously, how could anyone possibly think direct democracy, aka mob rule, is a good idea?
What the fuck has /. turned into? This isn't news. It isn't even a story. It's just some moron sharing his half-baked, stupid idea.
Ask Slashdot: We've Had Online Voting; Why Not Continuous Voting?
Because I've got box sets to watch!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
and I can't see political parties doing themselves out of a job. How real is democracy anyway, when so many people at the top of politics are connected, even related to each other?
Obstructionism may mean quitting your dayjob with a medium flow of law amendments, proposals or deletions, or denying voting rights to some because of higher flows of citizen duties or problems in communication lines.
This year an Italian senator has allegedly used a Markov chain system to flood the Parliament with amendments.
I dislike the idea of direct democracy because I dislike my peers, so I don't wish to be involved weekly or daily in {city, country, national} politic activities; maybe in a place where people respect each other it'd be more interesting and satisfying.
We do not have a representative democrat because the technical hurdles of a direct democracy are too big. We have a representative democracy so that we can limit the direct influence of the populous to try and create a fairly and better run system. And to separate political power of the populous from the decision making power of government.
A pitchfork wielding mob is the direct democracy equivalent to our justice system. This system is not more just, or better run, just because the people are directly responsible for the decision making.
And even leaving the whole, that is just a horrible system you propose aside for a second. You are not even thinking the necessary infrastructure through. Not only do you need a way for everyone to vote, you need a way to inform the populous of the issues. Nothing could ever be classified ever again, all citizens would need to take classes in economics, etc., And we would need some sort of information delivery system so that the populous all reads the same reports that politicians used to.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I suspect that you would love direct democracy because it enables the voter and takes power away from the party machines. Except that on many votes that count people can be oddly on the fence. Thus small voting blocks could repeatedly work together to throw in a fairly small number of votes and continuously get everything they want. Also with continuous voting the voting numbers would be low resulting in those voting blocks only having to be tiny. I could see in a municipal environment with 400,000 citizens having a voting block with 100 members would probably give you a near ironclad rule on anything but the biggest issues that come to the media's attention. All those seemingly stupid things about rezoning, etc would be ignored by the vast majority of qualified voters.
So the two modifications that I would make would be something where I would try to restrict any funding of organizing voting blocks, plus the other would be to make it so that if a minimum percent of voters didn't vote that the vote is effectively a no vote. I could see this happening on things like declaring May 18th, Jim Johnson memorial day.
But with voting blocks I could see some really really stupid and selfish laws being passed.
One other modification would potentially be a sober second thought delay. That a law passed would have some fairly robust delay before it would come up for a second vote. This way if someone slipped one in on Christmas eve that it would be exposed as stupid and shot down 6 months later or whatnot.
Then there would be an interesting set of constitutional ideals. Such as you can't vote spending unless you vote a matching tax.
Other keys would be that transparency would have to be wildly clear. So when the citizens would be voting on a stupid thing like a stadium all the contracts and whatnot would have to be in the open for all to read. No confidentiality agreements, proprietary stuff, etc. Ideally if anything is concealed voters could take it to a judge and shut the law or spending down on the spot.
Mark Twain â" 'If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it."
because those power hungry criminals that runs the government and federal reserve and wallstreet dont want you to
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I think this is a great idea as a non-binding way to let our representatives know how those of their constituents who care, and thus are most likely to vote in a real election, feel about various issues. Representatives should be able to voice their opinions about such issues too, in the same forum, and should be able to vote however they want regardless of the online polling results.
The only other thing that I would want in an ideal online representative democratic system would be a place to post ideas for bills that I think should be taken up. These could then be voted on by constituents too and maybe taken up by our representatives. As someone with no political connections, I otherwise have no idea where to start presenting such ideas.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Somehow someone would complain that an online system is racist against blacks because its harder for them to get a computer. First places require identification to vote? Now they require internet access? Madness.
1. How long do you vote every day, before you quit voting? Could you make it a week? A month? We cannot get close to 100% when we vote for a president every 4 years, how is daily going to work?
2. Once no one votes everyday, in come the professional voters. It would be so easy to pass what you want, if you are rich. The poor can now be hunted for sport!
3. The best president ever, who truly did everything to help the people of America, ends up out of office after one assassination piece on FOX, talking about how he and his wife have 2 girlfriends and all 4 sleep in the same bed.
4. Do you want anything decided by someone who votes everyday and has for years? The inmates would be running the asylum more than they are today.
5. Politicians dedicate 100% of their life campaigning for tomorrows vote. You though the last 2 years of a presidents term getting spent campaigning was bad.
6. Politicians can ignore the do not call list during their daily campaign. Your phone is now worthless.
7. Can I get an abortion today or do I have to wait for tomorrows vote?
8. President cannot veto things as too much comes across his desk every voting day (besides he has to campaign for tomorrow's vote).
9. What Oprah says, goes.
10. Shall I go on?
Seriously, once you come up with a "Great idea" your first though should be "How does this go wrong or get abused?". If you asked yourself that question, we would not be having this conversation.
and not a democracy. The idea that a temporarily popular idea could get implemented, or a temporarily unpopular law could be repealed, in days is a terrible idea. The designers of the US government made sure that there was plenty of reflection and thought built into the system (even if badly used too often).
What could go wrong with a system that records everyone of your votes?
Secret ballots are so last century...
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Not sure exactly how this would play out, but I think direct voting with each budgeted item and its privilege being tied to how a person votes. Put it another way - you want a national highway system, you pay for it and you get to use it. You vote no, you cannot use it - or you pay a heavy fee to use it. Want to purchase food in the store? It either needs to be locally made food, or you pay a usage fee as it was shipped on the national highway. Wait, instead you want a national train system, plus more localized legs and spurs? You pay for it, and you ride for free. You don't vote for it, you don't pay, except if you need it or goods shipped on it, and you pay a heavy fee to use it. Perhaps once a year you can "buy in" to a Federal program and be taxed for it and have access to it for no additional cost.
As the head of a large multinational. Who will I pay off to get laws that benefit me?
Because the mass of people are easily manipulated and poorly informed.
Having representatives do our bidding does create more of a "single point of failure" system. But if the representatives are not actively working to undermine our interests (which in the current system is completely unclear), then it becomes their full time job to examine legislation for its costs and benefits, and to act in ways beneficial to those who elected them, and to the country.
Currently due to the influence of money, our representatives are more like university development officers than legislators. That has to be addressed. But direct democracy, with the average IQ of 100, is probably not the cure.
Our government system currently has a sickness. Leeches or cocaine are not the cure, nor is decapitation. Legislators will always be self-interested, as they are leaders in the human species. Figuring out how to re-focus their interests and the interests of their constituents in spite of sophisticated advertising and the promise of cushy sinecures is probably the best path forward.
We simply can not live in a world where the majority rules. Read some history and apply what you learn. Our nation (the USA) was formed as a Republic to protect the rights of all, which led to a legacy of fulfilling that promise. The word democracy gets tossed around a lot as some kind of synonym for freedom, but it's nothing more than mob rule.
Citizens voting on laws routinely is horrible. Assumes citizen majority should legislate. Why? We have more than enough impractical and counter-productive klaws as it is, and the outrage of public concern leading to legislation just so the appearance of action is created...more stupid stuff like the TSA.
Democracy is a great way of passing up/down judgement on one's representatives, and fairly stable in a constitutional framework. Direct legislation works at all, only when the legislators can all know and negotiate with each other.
The real reason continuous voting doesn't work is because of reactionary bullshit. One thing triggers a spur of viral media, and BAM, laws would literally be changed over night without full analysts and due process of the consequences. Granted, I'm not a fan of the status quo either, but it is at least the lesser of two evils regarding the subject matter at hand.
In addition he doesn't understand other people's reasoning (and isn't interested in trying), can't think straight (leaves gaps in reasoning and lacks the stamina to address them) is far too emotional to deal in a sane way with complex policy issues. jumps to conclusions, and has the attention span of a goldfish (and therefore hardly never learns, except the most basic facts).
That is the reason we have a representative democracy, not a direct one. Elected politicians look after the medium-term tactics, and direct the professionals. That doesn't always pan out, but more often than not it works quite well.
Technical issues aren't important. If desired we could have set up nation-wide monthly referenda since the advent of the telegraph.
The thing the average voter can sort of be trusted with is (a) judging people (running for office) (b) choosing between to opposing world views, and (c) choosing to adopt or reject certain fundamental ideas.
That's sort of doable for almost anyone: if people make a mess of things, vote 'em out and go with the competition. It also allows people to decide on questions of principle (but only after they have been assessed by functionaries and elected officials)
The electorate (in our case) works like a final court of appeal, but also as a "noisy" arbitrator: individual opinions run the gamut from smart, insightful, and perhaps even noble to dumb, blind, and venal with terrible extremes. Fortunately _on average_ our electorate seems to have done fairly well over the past few centuries.
Direct democracy would be terribly noisy, incredibly volatile, over-emotional, and would in general serve us very very badly.
So lets leave day-to-day affairs to officials, short-term politics to representatives, and genuine questions of principle to the electorate.
The founders designed the US as a Republic with democratic components.
They probably don't use computers for it, but the Swiss public can overturn new legislation by instigating a referendum. I believe it requires something in the region of 50 thousand signatures to kick off a referendum. This is a good compromise between purely representative democracy (which is often not very representative at all) and absolute direct democracy . Let the government do its job making dull but necessary new laws etc, but if they get out of line with some new law etc, we should have a constitutional and effective way of striking it down that doesn't involve mass protest and teargas.
In Britain, referendums are rarely granted by the government and in a number of cases they have promised them and then actually backtracked. They don't like handing power over to the public. Can you imagine how wonderful it would be for the public to simply overrule the government over something like TPP?
The question is, how do we get there?
If I wanted to vote for everything I'd become a politician. The idea is to elect people you think are like minded and want the job, and let them run the show. There is more to life than politics. I'm tired of being bombarded 24/7 with politics.
well, it should be as easy as getting cell reception (imagine something like small cryptographic device with an lcd-screen and a 3g modem simalar to the one in amazon's kindles that work in most part of the world).
But who pays for the cell reception? To keep from skewing toward the interests of those most able to pay for cellular data service, election boards would have to subsidize cellular data service for less-advantaged people the way some cities' public transit systems operate without charge on Election Day.
Set the voting for a 24 hour period. 6am Friday, to 6am Saturday. If you are "too busy" to find time in a 24hour period, then maybe you shouldn't vote. Personally, 6am to 7pm should be enough time, unless you live in a huge city that takes 4-5 hours to get to work! If that case, the 24 hour period between Friday 6am to Saturday 6am should be ample enough time. NO electronic voting either. No matter what you do, it can be hacked! People need to take responsibility for those they elect.
It isn't so much voting, as it is communicating our desires to our representative(s) and having those representatives actually vote the way their electorate is asking them to.
Of course, now with a massive increase in population from the last time representatives were divvied up perhaps it is time instead to change the number of representatives. Perhaps 200 or 250 (4 or 5 per state) senators and ~5k Representatives (since they should represent the People), with sane term limits (2 or 3 election cycles). Maybe adding the massive number of Representatives would be what is needed to break the 2 party system we seem to have even without a legal limit on the number of parties involved...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
What most people tend to have trouble with is that a true democracy would fail JUST AS BADLY as the current system. The simple problem is that humans can not be trusted to do anything important correctly. Democracy doesn't work because nothing works because everything involves humans.
Postal votes already exist and who said anything about a constraint of zero lead time?
For details ask the Swiss, they have already had something that fits the suggestion above for deades.
That is already the case with any voting system and it has typically been dealt with by inserting representatives of everyone interested in the outcome into the process.
It just means the system does not have to be as naively designed as say a ballot box where the results are only counted by the incumbents. An electronic version of that would be as useless to the voter as a physical version of that.
There is not a single german family which had not relatives, or still has living relatives who where WII refugees.
Wii refugees? They must have discovered that they were Nintendo's slaves and wanted to defect to PC to become masters of their own experiences.
Oh, you meant World War II refugees. It took me a while.
What wonders me, why is "emigrate" written with one "m" and "immigrate" with two? Is that supposed to make sense?
"Emigrate" is a contraction of ex-migrate, and "immigrate" a contraction of "in-migrate". N assimilates to the following consonant's place, while X tends to just drop out entirely before M.
The single line of course contains:
"They've drastically increased the standard of living in that country over the past few decades, and turned it into a major world economic power
That's what I'm referring to.
While the Chinese government is a hell of a lot less "awful" than it used to be there are still things like a 99% conviction rate of those arrested. It's still an "interesting" place to do business as in executives of foreign companies that inconvenience state owned industries have been arrested, convicted and imprisoned within days of business deals going sour. Corruption is on the decline (as seen with the drastic decline in revenues for the many casinos around the world that helped out with a bit of money laundering) but I think the description above still stands (or at least that's how a few Chinese ex-pats are describing it)
Every time a rule or law is put in place it costs money for the government as well as the people. How many hundreds of millions of dollars have been squandered in courts over what is or is not, legal, pornography? How many millions have been wasted and still are wasted over the abortion issue? It should be illegal to reconsider some issues for a century or more unless some gross change has occurred to ask for a second vote or a court to interpret the law. Look at how much money was wasted fighting the Affordable Care Act. Now imagine how many billions would be lost if that act were struck down. Further, the House and Senate cost a ton of money to run even for a minute. So how much money do we lose with politicians reading speeches trying to beat down the act? And the very ones that yelp the loudest about the act are the ones that insist on trying to occupy congress and the courts to get rid of the act, all the while increasing their tax liabilities.
Other than the obvious problems with that which most have already been commented on there also the 1% who would not like that at all.
in essence what you are suggesting is that the politicians cannot be trusted to make decisions on your behalf during their term of office. your "vote" is in effect a declaration of abdication of responsibility to their "better judgement" and "expertise". if, from your experience of how that's worked out, this sounds ridiculous or hollow to you, then you know, finally and at last, why democracy is one of the weakest forms of government.
as such, i think the idea of allowing continuous voting is both fascinating and marginally scary. we already have a situation where democracy brings us the politicians we *deserve* - they are a reflection of our "lowest common denominator" understanding of what is best for a country (or state). easily swayed and manipulated by deliberate media misunderstandings or by mass hysteria (instead of by corporate vested interests and/or corruption), i honestly cannot predict which would be worse.
my feeling is that the best form of government is one in which the head of state has absolutely no power whatsoever but to make "proclamations" - like a king / queen / diplomat. experts would come to them to give advice, and the head of state would "proclaim" their decision / advice - nothing more. mayors and so on i would suggest remain in place, because local people need local help, solutions and community self-support.
if this sounds strange, look historically at the damage and ineffectiveness of national government decisions in any western country you care to choose. power attracts strange people as well as corruption. best to remove the temptation, eh?
The issue most commonly overlooked is the most important role played by the elected representatives: governing the government. There is the initial role of passing (and repealing) legislation, but that is one small part. Who makes sure the judges are doing their jobs properly? How can we know that the money is being spent as legislated? These duties should not be entrusted to the body that is being given the power to collect and spend the money, but to a body of publicly elected representatives. It is hard enough with this body to get the government to follow the laws it is charged with, and impossible without it.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
You don't want something so easily changed. It would be complete chaos. It seems like a good idea, but it is not one.
Or why not a dynamic representative democracy ? Grant your proxy vote to the expert of your choice, revoke it at will, cast it yourself if you wish...
There are sites like flashvote.com or nextdoor.com that try to accomplish just that.
On the one hand, anything that actually empowers the voters ultimately takes power away from politicians and wealthy industry tycoons, so such initiatives will blocked at every turn.
On the other hand, the vast majority of people don't have all the facts necessary to make good policy decisions, and so giving them more power winds up doing more harm than good. Do you know why we never hear about ships at sea that operate as democracies? Because they all sank.
Feel free to dream, though.
New Live Poll Lets Pundits Pander To Viewers In Real Time
Countries are assessed by their stability, such stability is part of the Representative Democracy most of 'the West' employs.
A system as suggested in the article would throw away said stability in exchange for a continuously changing political landscape.
I for one would have serious qualms about investing under/in such a system, you really don't know what's going to happen an hour later or even less in a year's time.
As others have already said the next stupid remark on Twitter or the scandal press (VOX News) can cause an immediate change in policy that when looked at a year later was a knee-jerk and very damaging.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
You have no clue what is politically important. You get to vote on the end result of years of discussion and mediation. If it were up to you to decide what to vote on, you would make a law that McDonalds shouldn't be allowed to sell french fries without ketchup, or something equivalent. It's not that you're particularly stupid, but your world view doesn't cover the entire nation or the entire world. It just covers what you eat at McDonalds.
As much as you might dislike it, this is why career politicians exist. They dedicate their lives to understanding and producing politics on a level you will never comprehend.
People do not have the time to learn to understand where there voting for. Even if we imagine that everone has the background and the education to fully understand where there voting for.
We are there already. As an average voter has no time to get enough information about the political issues, the reasonable solution would be to hire professionals that watch current situation and vote in the name of others. And this is actually the system that we have now.
Peter Cook did that back in 1970 - "The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer"
This is an old, failed idea (read any world history book). That's why we don't do it. Pure democracies tend to be highly emotional, with many people making totally ignorant, knee jerk decisions. People also tend to just vote to loot the treasury for themselves (sound familiar) until the government collapses. Pure democracies have very short lifespans.
I'm sure all this pontificating about how the average voter is stupid makes you feel very good about yourselves, but there are much more obvious reasons not to change laws constantly. How would police enforce these constantly changing laws? Do you expect them to become legal scholars that update their understanding of the law on a daily basis? How would they even know when working their beat if the law had changed since they left the station? How would lawyers and judges deliberate when they can't keep track of constantly fluctuating laws? How would citizens and businesses accomplish anything when their actions could become illegal as they're taking them?
If the practical downstream effects of policy changes aren't the first thing on your mind when you hear about an idea like this, maybe take a break from proclaiming the ignorance of the average person. You're in no position to be lecturing about them.
Some promising initiatives :
There's also an interesting paper from Google.
Look up "liquid democracy" if you are interested in how the citizens of the world are slowly making better governance systems based on our new communication technologies.
If you build it they will come...
I've had this idea for years: Instead of voting on everything, we could first try a smaller step, what I call the "Public Internet Veto" (PIV).
After the congress and the president, we the people get to veto any bill coming out of Washington. That way, the fickle public is not MAKING laws, but rather blocking the ones that the majority obviously does not want as a new regulation.
Other than the obvious effect, I also see it as a way of forcing our representatives to fully understand, then explain, the new law to its public to get its support so they don't veto it. Whereas right now, a politician campaigns, wins an election, and then can do what he wants, knowing that the feedback loop for being voted out of office by us next time is long and vague.
I suspect the PIV system would be unused by most of the people most of the time, but would come into play when issues important to the majority would arise.
I could see the founding fathers doing this if it were technically feasible then - but I read their dial-up was often unreliable.
The more electronic you make voting the more it's at the whims of those who hack into it. Use your imagination who would utilize this.
Why do we even need to address how monumentally bad it would be to introduce the sociological machinery that creates investment bubbles to the political process? The only way this wouldn't be a disaster is if elections were exactly as much of a sham as I've long believed they are. People were upset about the color of the President's suit for a little while, and are rarely upset about the worst of his policies. We would be better served by picking a new absolute monarch by lottery every three months.
Besides that, online voting was already a completely terrible idea. I'd think that was a settled argument around here.
On the one hand, there is a lot of argument that the population is too ignorant and/or easily swayed to be a proper voting block. On the other hand, we see the cronyism and corruption which the current system gives. I propose a middle way.
First, to eliminate the effect of votes cast by people who really don't care about an issue: give every registered voter a million "votes" per month. If you are hard-set on one issue, you can apply all million votes to that issue, but you don't get any say in any other elections that month. If you care about ten issues, you can apply 100K votes to each one. Now there is an incentive to shut up about issues you really don't care about and/or understand.
Regular people make lousy voters because they aren't experts in government. I'm sorry, I'm a software engineer, I don't know the right foreign policy to implement in Freedonia, or just how many tactical bombers we need to purchase. Having representatives can be useful because they can figure out the answers to these questions as their day jobs as we go about our lives.
So we allow for representatives. You don't elect a limited slate of them for two or six year terms. You "elect" as many as you want every month. Basically, you implement a way to hand your votes to somebody else. So you are a strong anti-terrorist who wants to send more funds to antiterrorism efforts. Larry the Antiterrorist feels the same way, and sets himself up as a representative. You decide to send him 50K votes a month. Every month, you can check the public record (which doesn't record how you spend your own votes, but does record how you spend votes given to you), and verify that Larry is in fact spending your votes on antiterrorism elections and not on, for instance, the Interstate System. Even if Larry is being paid by lobbyists, you can see exactly how he's voting, and can take your votes away from him next month if you no longer trust him.
There are clearly other problems, including the ability to make such a system crack-proof. I wouldn't try to foist this on the Federal Government to start with; there are too many ways that this could fail that we can already think of, and ways that this could fail that we have no clue about. Try this at a municipal level first: small towns, small cities, big cities. If it bombs out, go back to the previous constitution or by-laws. But test this thing out before putting an entire nation on the system.
People who live in glass houses shouldn't walk and text.
If the choices available continue to be limited, voting with (supposedly) better technology doesn't improve things. We just get to make more mistakes faster.
_Why America Stopped Voting_ by Mark Kornbluh addresses one set of choice limitations. There are others, but that's a good place to start.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Why not beta test some of these ideas?
Run some the group decision processes of some non-government organizations -- some of a political nature and some non-political ones -- and see how that works.
If the Sierra Club and/or the NRA and/or the Rhode Island Democratic Party and/or the Log Cabin Republicans discover it works well, and so do the UAW and/or Ford and/or McDonald's and/or the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod and/or your bowling league and/or the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, then you're onto something.
Let us know how that works out, OK?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Most people don't even know what they're voting for every 4 years. What makes anyone think continuous voting will help?
Everytime I hear "people cannot be trusted to vote" I am reminded of Bush v. Gore and the idiot claim that SOME votes must be treated illegally (not counted) in order to ensure the equal rights of SOME illegal votes (the 690 unsigned overseas absentee ballots illegaly admitted in only republican precincts).
"Mob mentality" hemmed in by the Constitution is what the founders tried to achieve, limited by the technology.
As for technology, how do you know your paper ballot was RECORDED the way you signed it? YOU don't have a copy with a link to the recording. Neither does anyone else.
So spare me the autocratic option.
The New York State Senate uses an "Open Legislation" system that allows anyone to not only see the text of bills but also to comment on them. However, in several years of using this system, I don't think I've ever seen anyone other than me comment on a bill... If people aren't even interested enough to comment, why would we expect them to vote.
Take a look at this New York bill, https://www.nysenate.gov/legis..., as an example. At the bottom, you'll see a Disqus comment block... Try to find a bill that someone actually commented on...
wish everyone would understand, you DO vote constantly. Every day you make a decision about where to live, what to drive, what to eat, what to spend your $ on.
If we had no income tax but were taxed on consumption, you would be voting continuously. The issue we have in our formerly constitutional republic is a separation between the taxes we pay and the choice we have to 'vote' and pay those taxes.
Want a war in Libya or Syria? No vote required, just pay the Syria war tax.
Want a road in your area? No vote required, pay the toll road.
Want a school in your area? Pay a school tax (and not a property tax with the local gov getting a cut and only a smaller percent going to actual education)
etc. etc.
Nobody can coerce your vote while in a private booth. Paper ballots are kept and can be re-counted, which is not uncommon in tight races. Actually some vote counting machines do give you a chance to make sure your paper ballot is read correctly.
Paper ballots are kept and can be recounted....don't tell that to Florida, which could not find over 32,000 votes for the NORC count in 2004. SURPRISE! 1/2 of those were stored by the State having come from Palm Beach.
It's a seductive, but bad idea.
Paper voting is the most secure way we have to vote. Computer voting is the least secure method of voting possible.
Pure democracy doesn't work beyond a hundred and fifty people. The same threshold at which pure communism will fail.
Creating a rolling pure democratic computer voting system just makes the problems, and the eventual takeover of the government by people and groups that you never ever what touching you government, faster.
Of course in the exceptional case, some could be misplaced. But there have been many many recounts without those problems. Certainly it is not a systemic vulnerability.
Nobody can coerce your vote while in a private booth.
But they can stand outside it and require you take a selfie in the booth with your ballot, and kill you if you spoil your ballot or vote for the wrong guy.
Paper ballots are kept and can be re-counted, which is not uncommon in tight races.
Worked so well for Florida in 2000, didn't it?
Actually some vote counting machines do give you a chance to make sure your paper ballot is read correctly.
Where? I've seen ones that verify the ballot is "valid" but never report how you voted, that'd violate the "secret" nature. If someone hacks the punch-card ballot so that the holes line up for Gore counted as Bush, Bush counted as Browne, and Browne counted for Gore, how could that ever be discovered after the polls closed? Especially if the hackers hacked 80% of the Voting machines? Changing all the votes won't work, 20% are valid, and you'd break those. And you can't trace the ballot to the machine.
There are millions of ways to hack the current system that are untraceable. In the extraordinary effort to find an untraceable vote, we've made lots of untraceable fraud. For the first 100 years, we had open ballots, and they worked fine, up until the Civil War, and the country was no longer stable. We should go back to open ballots. It's not perfect, but it's much better than what we have now.
Learn to love Alaska
There is already a study and a solution for such continuous voting - it is called "LiquidFeedback". It implements so called "liquid" democracy, where everyone can vote directly or select a proxy for division, subject area or topic. See http://liquidfeedback.org/
I think it's a great idea. In addition, I'd propose allowing people to set up their voting account to automatically do some of the voting for them.
For example, say I can't be botherered to follow issues related to foreign relations. But, my friend Tom is always very well informed on those issues. So, I can set up my account to automatically vote the same as Tom on any issues of foreign relations. Make it so that at any time, I could change that setting, or assign those votes to a different "representative".
I suspect this would quickly lead to a number of popular represenatatives, that do most of the voting. It might even be similar to our current system, except with many improvements.
This seems like a great idea until you had a history of support end-users on technology.
Actually it's a bit higher than 99% but I rounded it down.
The system is unashamedly "might makes right" over there instead of pretending to be a descendant of Magna Carta - so while 93% may look like an abuse to the justice system in one case 99%+ is business as usual under a different system.
So it's pretty awful being under an explicit "might makes right" system instead of being under one that may be collapsing towards that point.
Filter your policy/law makers with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
Name one.EVERY recount suffers "Lost, misplaced or mutilated" vote sheets
No bad idea. The Government can't even keep my personal data away from hackers. The list of ALL voters 300MB worth just got leaked.
No it doesn't. But you're most likely American, so I can see why you'd think so.
No, it doesn't. But you're most likely American, so I can see why you'd think so.
Institute a sane political system and voting system, the way every other civilized country does, or even, and this is the funny part, the way America requires in places that it's democratized, and you'll realize that elections can happen on a few week's notice, and iron-clad, verified results are available the same day.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I think a more fundamental way to fix the mess is to vote for solutions or objectives rather than only individuals.
Once an objective with measurable criterion for success had been established by the voters a computer could go thru the pile of elected officials and weed out the ones who did not measure up. The ones who did not measure up would be removed from office within a 3 day appeal period. The criterion for success would be compared to actual votes or actions (Executive, Judicial and Congressional). New elections in their jurisdictions would be held and new candidates with voting / action records to back them up would be elected.
Think about it "Citizens united" would have replaced over half of the Supreimes.
Two of the first objectives should be the democratization of all corporations. Simply disband any corporation that did not fundamentally democratize all aspects of its operations from work hours, product line, environmental impact, pay and compensation, leadership. Any company that failed to do this would be immediately handed over to government take over and worker reorganization. And those corporations who have moved overseas would be under the control and management of the workers in that country. This would be a foreign policy windfall for the US as it would force corporations to be respectful of its workers and enable our doctrine of fairness and environmental responsibility to quickly spread and end the industrial strength destruction of our environment.
The argument that electronic elections are not secure is correct that is the situation we have now. All the way back to the first "election" of bush 43. However untried some of the open source electronic election proposals should be tried out. Right now we have tyranny (facebook, twitter, and the like and other sociopathic media) filter out comments and suggestions that could provide us with a better future. They are the "store front" NSA goons rummaging thru our private lives at our expense in terms of both privacy and security. They are the backbone of the new censorship that has gripped the soul of the internet.
However if we vote on solutions / objectives we would clear out the crap. Actions that do not produce clearly solution based / objective based reactions would be criminal. Elected politicians, and judges who did not stick to objectives and goals voted upon by the citizens would be held criminaly responsible.
Well, at least as secret as old-school voting. E-voting and voting inside a voting booth are not exclusive.
What you describe is much more than continuous voting. It is also direct democracy, or at least liquid democracy.
If your question is not rhetorical, the first answer which comes to mind is that we did not have online voting. Online voting is still extremely rarely used by governments (below 1%).
If you are describing a form of direct democracy, then I would say this is rare because real direct democracy is highly inefficient (I described disadvantages in an introduction to liquid governance).
If you are describing "liquid democracy", then I would say it has been considered by many, just not deployed yet. So if are asking why liquid democracy has not been deployed, I would say this is because implementing liquid governance is much more technically challenging than implementing representative democracy. Liquid governance basically requires electronic voting, and even electronic representative democracy is still marginal. The page linked above also discusses the implementation status of liquid governance.